It's the end of the week, and the end of Jungle "week". Even though we had two weeks of the jungle theme, we still didn't get everything done, but to be fair we didn't get a chance to work on it everyday, like I hoped. The thing I would like to work on the most is reading . I have a ton of books in our themes thanks to the library and our own books, and yet I can't seem to get them interested in sitting down and reading them. I don't know why. Sometimes I can initiate reading a small book , but my audience usually looses interest pretty quickly. Today I tried a couple different ideas with stories, and it worked pretty well, but still got out of hand in a short amount of time. Alli is very hard to engage in reading. She will sit on the couch and look at books for a long time on her own, but if you try reading one to her, it's a matter of seconds before she's flipping the pages to the end of the book. My dream is to get Matt's work area moved downstairs, and if that little miracle ever happens, I'm taking over his spot with a reading area. I want to make it a cozy and inviting place to read books, and I'm hoping that will spark a new interest because there is so much more we can learn if they would just let me read to them.
In other news, our disease seems to have petered out and we got the all clear from the doctor to start socializing again yay! Alli still won't wear her hearing aides, which is really really causing me major anxiety. It's so hard to try and communicate with her and especially without the aides we are seeing a huge increase in frustration and tantrums. :( None of the doctors seem all that concerned, but I sure am. I try several times a day, but as soon as they are in, she rips them right out, even if I hold her hands back, she fights and fights until she gets at them and takes them out. She's going to the ENT on May 2nd so maybe we can figure something out then. I sure hope this is a phase that passes soon.
On a much happier note, we were in the grocery store tonight and cruising through the produce section, when all of a sudden I heard a little voice say apple. I looked at Alli, and sure enough she was signing and saying apple as we passed them by, and then did banana and cheese! Yay for the Signing Time DVD's! She is actually picking something up!
So here is our day today...
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| We started out by making jungle binoculars |
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| Emily decorated her's with stickers but Alli did not want to |
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| Next we made rain sticks |
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| Alli is pouring her lentils into her stick, which quickly turned into a huge mess, resulting in lentils flying everywhere and Keira taste testing them. |
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| Then she decided to pour them back out |
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| Decorating her stick |
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| Shake Shake Shake |
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| Rain stick making turned into sensory play |
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| Then it was time to make lunch, both girls on egg duty. They had a good system going. I peeled the egg put them in the bowl, Alli handed the egg to Emily and Emily sliced them with the slicer. Not bad little soux chefs. |
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| Making a lion face |
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| Alli's version equals very little lion and more finger paint. |
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| All done! |
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| So I needed to keep Alli busy while Em was working on one of the crafts. She was getting into trouble by turning the water on and off at the sink and making a huge mess. I actually had to turn the water off! This girl craves water activities like crazy! So I set her up with a tub of water and some animals and she went to town. She lost her privileges soon after though, for drinking the water and spitting it out all over the table. |
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| This one we aren't done with, but she is in the process of making a snake. This is the snakeskin. |
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| Remember the boxes we were painting the other night? Well, here they are as a "Jungle" obviously we didn't have the proper decorations for a real jungle so we had to make do with our pine trees and moss. Emily didn't care she loved playing with it. |
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| I had the hardest time getting a good picture. The lighting just wasn't good today. |
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| The amazing thing is that Emily let Alli play with her without getting mad that Alli was using the animals or in her way etc. I was so surprised and thought world war 3 would break out when Alli joined in, but they played together for quite awhile without issue. |
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| So yesterday I went to the mothership of learning toys/products (Lakeshore Learning) and found this felt set and board. Emily loves the Brown Bear book andand since I'm trying to get them interested in stories more, I thought I'd try some interactive tools. Well they loved it! I think we did this activity 4 times! |
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| Now I need a felt set for all our stories lol! |
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| Here I tried another storytelling idea by using the toy animals as props. We started out with a different book, but Alli stole it, luckily we have two in the series, so Emily and I continued with that. |
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| With the stolen book, acting it out with the animals |
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| She's very happy playing and doing her own thing |
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| Working the peg board. Still not quite there yet. It's too hard for her to put the pegs in the holes, but she is close! |
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| Emily made a tower. She wanted to make one as tall as me, but we ran out of pegs, only got to my nose. |
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| Thought I'd have her try something a little easier, and she nailed this one. Not color matching yet, but she can get the pieces in the holes. So that was our day today, by this time, I was ready for a break, so we went and dropped off a bunch of donations at Abbots (our local thrift store) since I'm on a major de cluttering kick, and then went to our family pizza night with our friends. Not a bad day! |
